“On the day set apart for the festival of All Saints, the shops are closed and business suspended. About ten o’clock the procession commences from the Cathedral. A troop of military, marching to a slow tune, lead the way, and are followed by six of the finest Indian girls that can be procured, bearing large wax candles, and dressed in the ancient costumes of their tribes, accompanied by the great drum, carried on the back of an Indian, and beaten by two others. These are succeeded by men bearing on their shoulders wooden platforms, on which are placed images of saints. Other representations of beatified cardinals and bishops follow, escorted by angels with spreading wings. Then succeeds an immense statue of St. Peter, bearing the keys, and supported by angels on each side. Other images pass forward in succession, and immediately precede the Host, which is carried under a splendid canopy, and accompanied by the archbishop and the dignified clergy. The various orders of friars, the priests, and the collegiate students, in their robes, follow; and fresh images of saints and angels, with a new troop of military, bring up the rear.... The setting out and return to the Cathedral are notified by frequent discharges of sky-rockets.”—_Dunn’s Guatemala_, p. 114. ----- Posts were planted around the plaza, to which a double line of bombas was attached. These were to be let off (for a wonder) after dark, and my friend Simon Roque was urgent that I should stay to witness the explosion, and even offered to anticipate the hour fixed for lighting them; but I had had enough of bombas for a lifetime, and rode home in the twilight. The streets were full of life, and the band stationed upon the steps of the grand Cathedral played the national anthem, while the soldiers grouped around the various “cuartels” joined in the chorus. For once, thanks to the darkness, I escaped the eternal presentation of arms and beat of drum, with which I was always received in the plaza, and which induced me to avoid entering it, except in cases of necessity. I sat on my horse for a quarter of an hour, listening to the music and the merriment, and speculated whether, after all, spite of unstable governments, and destitute of all those accessories which, according to our utilitarian ideas, are necessary to the popular welfare,—whether the people of Leon were not on the whole happier and more contented than those of any city of equal size in our own country? Here were no crowded workshops, where youth and age toil on, on, during the long day and by the pale gas light, amidst foul vapors, or in a corrupted atmosphere, that trade may thrive, and arrogant commerce strut in the Exchange! No thundering machines to disturb the calm of evening, to drown the murmurs of the night winds and the gentle melody of the falling dews, with their hoarse, unearthly clangor! [Illustration: NICARAGUAN PLOUGH.]